German online fashion retailer Zalando has reported that group revenues grew by 29.5% to Â€1.047 billion in the first half of its financial year.

GENERAL MERCHANDISE

Zalando reports strong first half

28 August 2014 | by The Retail Bulletin

German online fashion retailer Zalando has reported that group revenues grew by 29.5% to Â€1.047 billion in the first half of its financial year.

The company also reported a significantly improved EBIT margin of 1.2% compared to -8.9% in the same period last year. It said the improvement was driven by all major cost line items, including cost of sales, fulfilment and marketing

Rubin Ritter, member of the Zalando management board, said: “Achieving a positive group EBIT margin in the first half-year is a major success for Zalando. Historically, our performance in the first half of any financial year tended to be weaker than in the second half.”

Zalando said the ramp-up of operations at its new fulfilment centre in Mönchengladbach was on track and fulfilment efficiency had increased during the half year.

In addition, the company also rolled out its Zalando mobile app across all of its international markets, resulting in a mobile traffic share of 41% during the second quarter and over 3.8 million app downloads by the end of the quarter.

Active customers grew to 13.7 million at the end of the first half compared to 11.6 million at the end of the same period last year.

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